Written Answers Friday 7 July 2006

Scottish Executive

Breastfeeding

Mrs Nanette Milne (North East Scotland) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive how health care professionals will be kept up-to-date with the latest developments in infant formula feeding and its preparation to ensure that parents are given the information they need in order to minimise the risks associated with formula feeding.

Lewis Macdonald: This is a matter for individual NHS boards.

Breastfeeding

Mrs Nanette Milne (North East Scotland) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive what steps have been taken with health care professionals in NHS boards to evaluate formula feeding practices, given that 85 per cent of infants are formula fed in the first year of life.

Lewis Macdonald: This is a matter for individual NHS boards. The information requested is not held centrally.

Community Care

Mrs Nanette Milne (North East Scotland) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive whether single shared assessments are being conducted in all local authority areas across Scotland and, if not, whether it will list the local authority areas where such assessments are not being conducted.

Lewis Macdonald: Every local authority is carrying out single shared assessments.

Drug Misuse

Miss Annabel Goldie (West of Scotland) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-25751 by Hugh Henry on 19 May 2006 and subsequent newspaper reports, whether any Executive-backed pilot project to assess neuroelectric therapy is imminent.

Hugh Henry: The Executive has invited supporters of neuro-electrical therapy (NET) to work with the Chief Medical Officer and the wider clinical community to develop proposals for an independently evaluated randomised trial. Such a study would require special consideration of its ethical dimensions and will take time to design.

Education

Shiona Baird (North East Scotland) (Green): To ask the Scottish Executive what steps it will take to alleviate school staffing issues in Aberdeenshire, particularly in relation to teacher recruitment, retention, training and management, and the impact of such issues on the ability of schools to continue to offer classes in all subjects.

Peter Peacock: The staffing and management of individual schools in Aberdeenshire is a matter for that authority. The Scottish Executive is committed to a teaching workforce of 53,000 by 2007. To enable local authorities to achieve this objective additional funding of £18 million in 2006-07 and £44 million in 2007-08 has been provided for the employment of teachers. Before local authorities receive funding for 2007-08 they will be required to commit to a number of teachers which will in total achieve our target. I recently decided that a further £14.5 million of central resources would also be distributed through the National Priorities Action Fund for the employment of additional teachers this year.

  A national teacher workforce planning exercise is carried out annually which helps to ensure that sufficient numbers of teachers are available in all subjects. The latest survey of vacancies from February 2006 shows that only 245 full-time equivalent posts (0.5% of staff complement) were vacant for over three months. In Aberdeenshire only 13.9 full-time equivalent posts (0.6% of staff complement) were vacant for over three months.

Health

Marlyn Glen (North East Scotland) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive what percentage of pregnancies were teenage pregnancies in (a) Dundee and (b) Angus in the most recent year for which figures are available, also broken down by postcode sector.

Lewis Macdonald: Due to the small numbers involved at postcode sector level, with the associated risk of disclosure, the following information is presented at postcode district level.

  Teenage1 Conceptions2 as a Proportion of All Conceptions, Dundee City and Angus Council Areas by Postcode District: Year Ending December 20033

  

 
 All Conceptions
 Teenage Conceptions (%)


 Angus
 1,410
 12.3


 DD10
 205
 15.1 


 DD11
 396
 16.7 


 DD2
 40
 2.5 


 DD3
 21
 - 


 DD4
 10
 - 


 DD5
 141
 8.5 


 DD7
 128
 7.0 


 DD8
 339
 12.4 


 DD9
 115
 10.4 


 PH11
 3
 - 


 PH12
 12
 - 


 Dundee City
 2,167
 18.4 


 DD1
 135
 13.3 


 DD2
 521
 17.5 


 DD3
 558
 20.4 


 DD4
 734
 21.7 


 DD5
 219
 7.3 



  Source: ISD, Scotland, SMR01 and SMR02.

  Notes:

  1. Based on age 13 to 19 at time of conception.

  2. Includes deliveries, spontaneous miscarriages and therapeutic abortions.

  3. NHS Tayside have recently been experiencing difficulties in submitting SMR02 (maternity hospital records) to ISD, and the most recent data available for all pregnancies is calendar year 2003.

Historic Buildings

Murray Tosh (West of Scotland) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has considered the European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH) project to link sites of significant industrial archaeological heritage and whether it is considering developing, or supporting the development of, a Scottish "themed route" comparable with those being developed in Wales, England, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Patricia Ferguson: Historic Scotland is aware of this cultural route. Under development since 2001, it was launched in October 2005. Three Scottish anchor points are already identified on this route: Dundee Heritage, New Lanark and the Scottish Mining Museum. These three partners may wish to add other related sites to the route. Historic Scotland has given advice in the form of suggested sites and themes. Leadership of the route is by the partners and the individual anchor points.

  As it is an international digital route a single theme would not be purely Scottish but of course a strong Scottish component can be threaded through each one.

National Health Service

Stewart Stevenson (Banff and Buchan) (SNP): To ask the Scottish Executive how many people have been granted compensation for being wrongly denied fully-funded NHS continuing care in each of the last 10 years and what the aggregate cost was of that compensation.

Lewis Macdonald: This information is not held centrally.

Prison Service

Stewart Stevenson (Banff and Buchan) (SNP): To ask the Scottish Executive what proportion of prison inmates were involved in training courses in each year since 1997.

Cathy Jamieson: I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:

  The information is not available in the format requested, due to the turnover of prisoners, particularly those on short-term sentences.

  The following table show the total number of prisoners gaining SQA qualifications:

  

 Year
 SQA Qualifications


 2000-01
 1,457


 2001-02
 2,167


 2002-03
 3,529


 2003-04
 2,594


 2004-05
 3,408


 2005-06
 3,548

Scottish Executive Finance

Alasdair Morgan (South of Scotland) (SNP): To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will review its strategies for the allocation of grant funding to find means of (a) achieving a more balanced distribution of grant funds and (b) avoiding the need to close grant schemes early in future.

George Lyon: While we can and do review individual grant schemes (a) to ensure that they continue to meet their aims, and (b) to ensure that they remain within budget, the Scottish Executive currently has no plans for a wider review of its strategies for the allocation of grant funding.

  Each grant scheme is designed to meet a particular need. In some instances there is a need to limit the number of applications awarded grant so as to ensure that the approved budget for the measure is not exceeded. This is usually a key aspect of overall grant scheme budgetary control and is supported by objective assessment processes and transparent rules to govern the basis on which some applications will be accepted and others not.

Telecommunications

Mr Bruce McFee (West of Scotland) (SNP): To ask the Scottish Executive what public health campaigns it undertakes to inform the public about the specific absorption rate (SAR) values of mobile phone handsets and what action it takes alongside telecommunications companies to ensure that their sales staff communicate information about SAR values to customers.

Lewis Macdonald: The Scottish Executive, as well as the other UK Health Departments encourages retailers to make available to customers the leaflets produced by the UK Government on Mobile Phones and Health.

  Provision of information on the SAR from phones informs consumer choice by allowing the public to compare the potential for exposure to radiofrequency radiation from different models of mobile phones. However, because phones adapt their output power to the minimum required for effective communication SAR values have limitations as a means of comparing exposures in actual use.